


On the Wing in a Storm

by lemonsharks



Series: The Thing With Feathers [2]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexuality, Developing Relationship, Diary/Journal, Dragon Age Quest: An Unexpected Engagement, F/F, Failboats In Love, Fluff and Angst, Kissing, Undefined Female Inquisitor (Dragon Age), cassandra is at least 5 percent gay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-26
Updated: 2016-05-26
Packaged: 2018-07-10 08:36:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6975850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemonsharks/pseuds/lemonsharks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Cassandra comes to the realization she is at least 5% gayer than she thought she was, and completes Josephine's romance quest. With a little help from her comrades.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Wing in a Storm

Cassandra writes letters to herself. She labors over each word, which must be _right_ , but she writes them. 

_Do I love Josephine?_

She keeps them in a bundle, tied with twine and and tucked away in her footlocker, and refers back to them on occasion. 

_I believe I do. It is … most disconcerting._

She feels a tightness within her when they are together, alight at the sound of her voice. 

_I had never considered I might love a woman. I had turned away from the idea altogether. And yet. She is everything I have dreamed I might find, only small and soft._

_“My love, I’ve seen your incandescent days.”_

_She has given me poetry and flowers, and--I cannot think of this any longer. Do I love Josephine? I do not know. I think I might._

She will see her tonight, over the last pages of _Swords and Shields_ , and for now, Cassandra must lay down her pen. Battering the training dummies is far easier than contemplating a part of her--a capacity--she never imagined she might have. 

“Am I happy?” she murmurs, folding the letter into thirds. She slips it beneath the stack, with the others. 

Cassandra buckles on her breastplate, and finds herself humming. She takes up her weapons and finds herself singing, rusty and off-key, and the thought pierces her. Josephine had been a bard, according to the Inquisitor’s reports, and she would like very much to hear her sing. 

Cullen meets her by the dummies, with his mantle off and his sword in hand. He runs through a series of patterns, and shouts into the early-morning stillness. After practice, she will pray. She will ask for some sign that she is making the right choice and--if none comes, she will at least have requested it. 

Evenly matched against her and trained in a different fighting style than Cassandra learned, Cullen is always a challenge. He gives her a smile and shouted welcome, and they move to the sparring ring where the first rounds of the day have not yet begun. 

They circle one another. Cullen, who knows she prefers to fight silently and who ordinarily prefers the same himself, has hundreds of words worth of conversation when they spar. 

“Do what you know will set your opponent off balance,” he tells their recruits. “There is no honor in war.”

Today, to Cassandra, he says, “You’re looking especially well today, Seeker.”

Not mockery, which she can tune out and which he is not overly good at anyway, but talking. He lunges and she parries, letting his blade glide off her own. 

“And you,” she says, “Know better than to talk through practice.” 

She feints left and Cullen reacts, catching her sword on his shield and shoving her back. Cassandra resettles and circles. 

“You’ve been very cheerful of late,” he says. 

Cullen tries to hook his shield with Cassandra’s, to get his blade up far enough that he might solicit a _yield_ , but Cassandra spins and rolls. She comes to her feet some yards away, and charges back, the point of her sword resting at Cullen’s throat. He raises both hands, sword clattering to the ground. 

She smiles. Low-voiced, she replies, “I’ve a great deal to be cheerful about.”

Then she withdraws and sheathes her weapon, and they begin again. 

A crowd gathers over the next three rounds, whooping and shouting while Cullen tries to unsettle her and she refuses his bait. 

“Politest damn heckler I’ve ever seen.” She hears Seggrit’s nasal voice from the assembled. 

They finish a round with Cassandra grounded, sword out of reach. Cullen offers her a hand up, which she takes. She retrieves her sword from where it had fallen. 

“My lady!” Josephine calls, from her place beside the ring. 

When did she arrive? How long has she been watching? 

Cassandra finds herself glad that exertion had her flushed already. She says, “Ambassador, it is always a pleasure.“

Josephine slips a hand into her pocket and produces a fine-woven linen square, embroidered at the corner with her initials. 

“For luck,” she says, taking Cassandra’s gauntleted hand in her bare one. 

She tucks the handkerchief between her vambrace and the padding underneath. Sweat dampens her hair and trickles down her neck.

“You are here,” Cassandra replies, quiet so that only Josephine can hear. “That is all the luck I need.” 

Cullen coughs, and then reminds her that this match decides the winner--unless she would like to forfeit. She rolls her eyes in the direction of their general and steps away, readying herself. 

The next moments fall in the crash and spark of metal against metal, Cullen silent and intent for once today. Cassandra, for her part, dances in and out of his range, buoyed by the favor so close to her pulse, and what it means that Josephine thought to give it. 

_I love her_ , she thinks, unbidden, and brings the flat of her blade up against Cullen’s gorget. “Do you yield?”

“I’m not even tired. I expected better from you, Seeker.”

“You are faltering,” she says, withdraws, circles again. 

And he is. Getting sloppy, leaving half-second openings she might anticipate and slip through. There’s a stone on the practice court, and Cassandra backs away, leads her opponent toward it. 

In the moment his foot settles on the stone, she charges forward once more, catching his surprise and knocking him off balance. Cullen hits the ground in a clatter of armor, and greets Cassandra’s blade with a smile.

“Well fought,” he says, while the assemblage cheers for her. “Same time day after tomorrow?”

“I would not miss it for the world.”

They depart the ring, Cullen to his office and Cassandra to Josephine’s side, while the Iron Bull and Lieutenant Aclassi take their places. The crowd does not disperse, and for a moment Cassandra considers staying to watch as well. 

Then Josephine gives a small contented sigh, and Cassandra speaks before she knows the words have left her mouth. 

“Come walk with me,” she says, “I’ve scarcely seen you since we returned from the Temple of Dirthamen.”

“There’s simply been so much to do since Adamant,” Josephine begins, and Cassandra silences her with a light hand on her arm. 

The battlements are deserted. The sound of Aclassi and the Iron Bull taunting one another and the shouts of the onlookers drifts up and out across the view. 

“Nonetheless,” Cassandra replies, “I have missed you.”

A light blush colors the apples of Josephine’s cheeks, which means she must truly be burning up. Cassandra’s stomach flutters that she can cause such a reaction in her. 

They walk in silence for a time, and pause above the garden. This time of morning Skyhold is alight with activity, men and women small as mice from this high up scurrying about their tasks. 

It is good to know that they can have silence as easily as speech. 

On impulse, she strokes Josephine’s cheek with her thumb; Josephine, for her part, leans up into the touch, and Cassandra draws a soft line down the sweep of her jaw and over her mouth. She leans down, touching her chapped lips to Josephine’s soft ones. She settles a hand on Josephine’s hip, the other curling behind her head and tangling with her hair. 

Josephine nips her lower lip and licks the spot, her arms wrapped close around Cassandra’s back. 

“I would like to read to you tonight,” Cassandra says, for it has been too long since the last time they sat before Josephine’s fire and shared a good story.

Josephine nods once, leans up and places a kiss at the corner of Cassandra’s mouth. 

“I would like nothing more than that.”

Josephine departs, and Cassandra returns to her customary place near the training dummies. She practices briefly there, but her heart isn’t in the exercise and without the presence of a training partner--she can scarcely maintain her own attention. 

Later that day, the Inquisitor departs for the Hissing Wastes with Sera, Blackwall--Thom Ranier, now--, and Dorian in tow, the latter grumbling fit to be heard across Skyhold. 

She swings her blade into the dummy’s shoulder, and it shakes with the impact. Knowledge that Josephine is just a few hundred steps away in her office distracts her, makes her silly and giddy. _I have never been this kind of woman_ , she thinks, and knows the lie for what it is almost as soon as she’s finished the thought. She has _always_ been this kind of woman, only … she has scarcely had the opportunity for such tendencies to center themselves before her. 

All of her unrequited crushes, her one lover, have been men. That Josephine stumbled upon her ideal romance was--not a mistake, she would not do the disservice of calling it that--but an accident. An accident of personality and circumstance. _Can I_ love _a woman?_

The answer, plain to all onlookers, appears to be _yes_ , but she wonders. Is what she feels _love_? So many years have passed since she last felt the ache in her chest that she scarcely considers herself competent to determine whether it is the same ache. Is this desire for companionship she feels, or more simply … desire? 

She makes a sound in the back of her throat and goes back to pummeling the dummies. 

It is not long before the Iron Bull joins her, axe in hand and unarmored.

The crowd from earlier in the day has dispersed. They practice for a time in silence, running blocks and strikes against the dummies and, later, against each other. Bull is a good sort--easy to talk to, which she supposes is one of the things that earned him such leeway in the Ben-Hassrath. Now that she does not have to remind herself to hold her tongue around him, however, words stick in her throat like stale bread. 

For half an hour they shift to unarmed combat; Cassandra goes down six times and uses leverage and surprise to take Bull down once herself. He rises, laughing, and congratulates her on the move. 

“Sneaky,” he tells her, and, “Nice use of the blind side. Lots of people forget it’s there. Not you, though.”

“I imagine they’re distracted by the rest of you,” she replies, to another laugh. 

One more round, and they go to the tavern for rest and cold drinks. After a few moments she works up the courage to begin--this is not a conversation she ever thought she would have with Bull, or at all. 

“You have taken lovers of both sexes,” she says, and takes a drink. “How did you _know_ that that was something you--wanted?”

“This is about you and the Ambassador.”

“Are we that obvious?”

“You really are.” 

“Ugh.”

Bull goes quiet, a trick to make her continue. She knows he’s doing it, and it works anyway. 

“I have never felt this way for a woman. I’ve scarcely felt this way for a man, only--” she stops, reconsiders. “I had not imagined a woman might raise such a fire within me.”

“And here you are.”

“And here I am.”

“My advice, go with it. You change. Sometimes you surprise yourself. Nothing wrong with that.”

He makes it sound easy, this realignment of the primal things Cassandra had thought about herself before. Yet, it is true she had resigned herself to a life without romance. 

That she would not find the feelings and the actions she desired reciprocated. Even meeting Regalyan again, before the Conclave, had rung hollow. The warmth of old friendship rediscovered was there, certainly, but none of the youthful passion she remembered. 

She thought, briefly, that she might have imagined their affair all those years ago, but no. It was simply that the coals of it had burned down past rekindling. And if that is the case with her first lover, Josephine feels like a banked fire.

“You make it sound easy.”

“It isn’t always, though, is it?”

Cassandra sighs, and finishes her drink. She says, “You have given me much to think about, friend,” and takes her leave, only a little less confused than when she first sat down. 

_Do I love Josephine?_ she asks herself on paper late that afternoon, as the sun burns orange through her window. Her chest clenches at the question, and her breath goes short. She has dried, pressed calla lily leaf marking her place in the book she’s read four times since Josephine gave her the copy. 

_All of this tumult is so like love it cannot be anything else_. 

_Besides_ , she thinks, _no right-minded person would expel Josephine Montilyet from their bed._

The sun descends, and her heart and steps arise--she will see her soon, perhaps kiss her, and she wants this more than she has wanted anything in a very long time. 

With that she adds this letter to the stack of others and goes to the great hall. 

Josephine sits still behind her desk with a letter in her hands when Cassandra enters. Her eyes are dry, but red-rimmed, and she looks up with a weak smile. Puts the letter down. She rises, crosses the space, and reaches to embrace Cassandra--then pulls back. 

“Something is wrong,” Cassandra says. There is no question to it.

“Indeed,” Josephine replies. “There is something I must tell you. My parents have--” she stops and swallows. “I have been betrothed to an Antivan lord. I have not seen him since--well, that hardly matters _now_ , does it?”

“This is an outrage,” she says, but there’s no fire in it. Cassandra knows perfectly well how ordinary a thing this betrothal is, and the honorable response to it. 

_Burn_ _honor_ , she thinks for a moment, and breathes a steadying breath. 

“It is not unexpected, truly, and--. Otranto is--. You will understand that we must cut our--that we cannot be seen kissing on the ramparts, while I talk some _sense_ into them--”

Josephine Montilyet does not _babble_. 

“There must be a faster way,” Cassandra says, and Josephine smiles sadly. 

“There is. You could duel with him.”

“Then I will duel him.”

“ _No_. You risk your life for the Inquisition every day, and I--I won’t have you putting yourself in danger for my sake.”

“Need I remind you that I’ve slain dragons?”

“It is not the same.”

Cassandra turns away, and then back. 

A duel? Something so simple as a single combat would save Josephine from a marriage she does not desire, would allow them to continue their romance? 

“Is this Otranto the greatest swordsman in all Thedas?”

“No, but--he _is_ very good and--,” she stops, draws in a breath. “Need I remind you, Cassandra, that you were not yet precious to me the last time you slayed dragons.”

A log falls in the fire and sends a shower of sparks up the chimney. Cassandra makes a wordless noise in her throat and rakes her hand through her hair, dislodging her braid from where she pinned it this morning. 

She cannot _argue_ against this particular statement, that the very act of taking up her sword in defense of Josephine’s matrimonial freedom would cause her anguish, but--she cannot leave it be. It is as if someone has wrapped a wire around her heart and begun twisting it, each rotation squeezing harder, tighter, until she thinks she might burst with emotion. 

And Josephine, for her part, has wrapped her arms around her middle and looks now toward the fire, now raised from the disturbance. She does not turn her face to Cassandra for some time. 

“I lo--” Cassandra begins. The words slip past her lips without permission.

“Do not make this harder than it must be. _Please_.”

“I will find a way for us, Josephine,” she says. “I promise you I will.” 

Perhaps, she thinks, it is time to call in the one favor Leliana owes her.

She finds Leliana kneeling before her altar, and waits for the other woman to finish her prayers before she speaks. As Left Hand, she had been charged with _fixing_ things--with locating problems and encouraging them to … go away. 

“Something troubles you, Cassandra?” 

Weeks of her own frustration with herself, with the landscape within her, boiled down into those three words. _Something troubles you_. 

_Something_ had, certainly, until this afternoon. Now Josephine’s rebuff, whether temporary or lasting, have replaced it with an ache. 

It aches that Josephine will not be first to hear of her love. It aches that she must speak now, and here, lest she lose her nerve.

She lets all of her words spill from her, and when she is done Leliana blinks once. Then she steps forward and takes Cassandra in her arms, murmuring wordlessly at first. A long time passes before she speaks. 

“Thank you,” she says, releasing her, “for trusting me with this. For loving Josie fully, for admitting it. Finally.” 

“Finally?”

“She is as close as I might ever come to a sister,” Leliana says, “and I treasure her. I know that you will do right by her now. Now, how shall we go about ruining this _Lord Otranto_? No one has a past that _entirely_ unblemished...”

 _Cullen_ , at least, had had no idea, though he sends a soldier with instructions to make the challenge with the next of their ships bound for Antiva. 

And then: she waits. For news of any unseemly business Josephine’s fiance may have gotten up to, for word _from_ him accepting or declining the duel, for Josephine to hear back from her family on the topic of her engagement. 

Months pass. Cassandra goes with the Inquisitor, and Cole, and Vivienne, to liberate the village of Sahrnia on their way to the Arbor Wilds, and Cassandra keeps her distance from Josephine in at the camp. And then there is Corypheus’ attack to contend with, Solas’ hasty exit, the decision of the Chantry hierarchy as to who will be the next Divine. 

The Inquisitor takes them to the Emprise and they put down the demon holding Suledin Keep. There are dragons to be slain; she sends for Iron Bull, and Cassandra escorts Ser Michel back to Skyhold, the worse for wear but alive. On their way to the War Room, Cassandra notices an unfamiliar figure in the courtyard. His voice--for he speaks with the Inquisitor’s trainer--carries the music of Antiva with it.

Cassandra’s chest tightens and her skin grows cold, beads of sweat prickle the back of her neck and evaporate, chilling her further. 

He wears a livery that has haunted Cassandra’s dreams for the last several weeks.

“My pardon, ser, but do you happen to come to Skyhold on behalf of Lord Otranto of Antiva City?”

He does. 

She visits Josephine--not in her office, as would be proper given their circumstances--but in her personal quarters. 

“You should not have come,” Josephine tells her, rising from her seat and laying her book upon the bed as she crosses the room. She takes her candle from its holder and lights the rest of the branch, filling the room with a warm orange glow. Cassandra’s cheeks heat. 

“I had to see you. I had to tell you, that whatever happens between us, I love you, That I have loved you for some time now, though it is a love that makes me question my very nature.” 

“I have heard nothing from my family,” Josephine says, stepping closer. “As of now, my engagement stands.”

She releases a breath, and finds Josephine’s left hand at her waist and her right tracing the cue to _hush_ down the bow of her lips. She shudders with proximity, taking Josephine’s hand from her mouth and turning it, kissing the base of her thumb. 

Josephine pulls her down into a firm kiss, biting once and letting her tongue slip between Cassandra’s lips for a moment … and out again. It leaves her breathless and bereft, that kiss, and the ones that follow it, plant a need in her. It lays down the wish to strip Josephine of her nightdress and touch her with hands that have, these last years, only known her own skin. 

She pulls away, breath short, 

“This would be wrong,” Josephine says, though she’s begun unbuckling Cassandra’s breastplate. 

“Do you care, that it might be?”

“No.”

Cassandra is on her way to Val Royeaux the next morning. 

Lord Otranto is an accomplished duellist, and a skilled swordsman. 

This does not take her by surprise, but the weight of what hangs upon her victory or defeat makes up for the lack of shock. He wears an easy smile and taunts more than Cullen--less than Lieutenant Aclassi. He makes a worthy opponent, and would make a worthy ally, were the Inquisitor here to talk him into joining them. 

After twenty minutes’ stalemate she nearly has him yielding; Josephine’s voice rings out through the city. Demanding that they stop. Demanding to know the meaning of--this. All of this. 

“Because I love you,” she says. “And I want all Thedas to know that I do.” 

Josephine draws in a sharp breath, and Otranto sheathes his sword. Says something about _standing in the way of love_. She scarcely hears, for the ringing between her ears. 

“I love you, Josephine,” she says. “Please allow me to love you before all the world.”

It is Josephine, then, who runs to _her_. 


End file.
